The article makes the observation many people choose their first career when in their teens or early twenties and they may not know themselves or the working world very well. My own experience is almost everyone does exactly that.
Later in the piece, Melita Sharp, of Career Coach Consulting, is quoted as saying: "In some cases it gets right down to fundamental, existential type questions."Who am I, and what am I doing here?"
That's the money shot. For me, this is the questions each of us should be asking ourselves from the first moment we are able to understand what it mean. At the same time, we should not panic if there are no obvious answers. Instead, we should set about exploring ourselves and the world around us and in the course of doing so, define the answers to this question.
In my own case, I thought I wanted to be a journalist and studied to be one. But I soon realised (late '70s) the hours were long, the pay was low and smoking was more or less compulsory - whether it was you puffing on the fag, or the 50 people around you hardly mattered. No thanks. That career bit the dust right there but the impetus behind the choice lives on in this blog, my video making, and some other hobbies I have that see me write for at least an hour almost every single day.
I was also keenly interested in the future. This made technology fascinating as an enabler of the visions of the future I had been exposed to. I moved into IT in the early 80s and stayed there for over 20 years, during which time I gradually moved away from the Tech and over to sales and then technical pre-sales. Along the way, some of the office heroes, who worked all the hours there were, succumbed to heart attacks, cancer and other serious health issues. Those existential questions come into sharp focus at such times: "Who am I, and what am I doing here?"
By 2003, I liked the mechanics of my job and I was being paid buckets of money. I liked the people I worked with and worked for, despite working a lot of hours. I got to do some travelling. I know first hand what the opening scenes of "Lost in Translation" feel like. But my job had morphed into a role functionally enabling the largest manufacturing corporations on the planet to move their manufacturing to China over the next several years. The scale of these plans was enormous. I came to see this as ultimately destructive of millions of jobs of people in North America and Europe and elsewhere who didn't know in 2004 a few years later they would be unemployed and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. The process was then already under way for their lay-off / redundancy in 2007, 8 and 9. I began to feel like an accomplice to execution as I began work each day. So I left. We had to sell our properties to make that possible as our debt was not sustainable without my income. A lesson learned.
During those times in your life when you want to change direction you must to be free to do it. Better to rent and save a pile of money than to own a mortgage, if you want to be free. Sure, the house you spend the best part of your life paying off may be an asset that will appreciate, but it comes at a very high price if you're stuck in a rut for decades and you're miserable with it and unable to be the person you are in the place you want to be.
When the time comes, if you've done the right things, you'll have a big deposit, a small mortgage and the income to pay it off quickly. Of course if inflation takes off, you want to put your money into tangible things that will retain their value. That may mean a house. But whatever it means, you still don't want to borrow money to the extent you can't be free to pursue the life you want to live and to know who you are and why you're here.
Sounds like you got out at the right time there mate. I think to many got carried away with what loans and money they COULD get and forgot to stop and think if they could actually afford it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the being young and not knowing what you really want. Often you have an idea and then realize its really not what you thought it would be.
And then you fall into a job or profession because you happened to be good at it, or it was there, and you get to 30-40s and realize that you would actually like something else, even though you are tied into this one thing.
Im forever changing what i want my career to be, but i think above all, i want diversity. I Like smaller companies where i can do lots of jobs, both good and bad, and not be stuck doing the same drudgery day in and day out.
Liz: I'm a diversity fan, too. I do a job, get my head around it, and find myself saying: "Is that all?"
ReplyDeleteI think my ambition is to be the human equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. A skill in the collection to meet any eventuality.....or it's time to acquire a new skill.
The enemy is time. Too many things take 'too long' and there is so much to do or could be done.